


Nebula - The Courtney Chronicle

by TheArtificialDane, veronicasanders



Series: Galactica [4]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 13:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16682086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArtificialDane/pseuds/TheArtificialDane, https://archiveofourown.org/users/veronicasanders/pseuds/veronicasanders
Summary: The Year: 2004. The Place: Brisbane, Australia. Baby Courtney is 11 years old. And she has her first crush. And it is not going well…





	Nebula - The Courtney Chronicle

Loving someone from afar was hard work. Ever since Isabelle’s family had moved in the summer before, Courtney had been praying, wishing, hoping against all hope that the older girl would notice her. Would talk to her. Would look in her direction for more than a passing, dismissive glance. 

Courtney loved everything about her. From the red streaks in her platinum blonde hair, to her wide hazel eyes, to her sarcastic laugh, to the dimples that appeared in her cheeks when she flashed her crooked smile. She loved how Isabelle didn’t give a fuck what the “popular” kids did, but instead had her own style, her own interests, her own laissez-faire attitude. She kept a leather-bound journal and used to scribble in it angrily, glaring at people when they pissed her off. She told one particularly dickheaded boy in their neighborhood that she was a witch, after she saw him push his sister down a hill. Helping the girl up, she stared at him with daggers in her eyes, swearing to curse him for all eternity unless he apologized.

She was everything.

Of course, a girl like that - the epitome of cool, the queen of counter-culture - that girl had no use for Courtney. Who never spoke up, who never made trouble. Never stood out in any way. Courtney was everything Isabelle was not. Ordinary. Vanilla. Boring. 

And then, one day, at the start of Summer holiday, a miracle happened. A bone-fide Christmas miracle. Courtney’s parents decided to take her brother to Sydney to look at colleges (as if Ben was going to college. Courtney’s parents meant well, but they were a little slow on the uptake sometimes), and voila! Suddenly she was staying with Isabelle’s family. Sleeping on a twin bed in her room. For five. Whole. Days.

***

“I hate ALL my clothes!” Isabelle moaned, tossing yet another outfit dramatically to the ground. “I have literally NOTHING to WEAR! This fuckin’ SUCKS!”

Courtney bit her lip. She wanted to offer a solution, but wasn’t 100% sure how a drag closet would be received. “Um…we could go to my house. Ben has some pretty cool shit.”

“Boy clothes?” Isabelle looked skeptical.

“Well…not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s sort of hard to explain.”

Isabelle narrowed her eyes and sighed, exasperated. “Alright, Miss Mysterious. Let’s go.”

Butterflies filled Courtney’s stomach as they walked outside, through the garden, across the narrow creek, up the hill to Courtney’s house. Courtney led her up the steps to Ben’s room, where giant, dramatic black letters warned them to “KEEP OUT OR SUFFER THE DIRE CONSEQUENCES!!!!!!!!” She pushed open the door, feeling more nervous about Isabelle in her house then invading her brother’s sacred personal space. 

She slid open the mirrored closet door, revealing the two-third’s of the closet where Ben kept all of his drag stuff. Sequins and feathers and lace…fringe and sparkles and pleather and fishnets. Rows of heels on the floor below the clothes, and stacks of wigs and boxes of jewelry on the shelves above, along with his extensive makeup collection.

Isabelle’s eyes practically bugged out of her head. “This is your BROTHER’S stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“So…your brother is gay?”

“Um…yeah.”

Isabelle considered this for a moment, and then nodded approvingly. “That’s cool as.”

Courtney felt a sense of relief wash over her, pride replacing her edgy nerves. “He does my makeup and stuff all the time.”

“Really?! You’re sooo lucky. All my brother cares about is surfing and his dumb motorbike.”

Courtney gestured grandly to the closet. “Well…you can try some of his stuff on if you want.”

Soon enough, they’d both concocted entirely new ensembles. Isabelle in a shiny copper halter top and houndstooth shorts, and Courtney in the more ridiculous outfit that Isabelle had insisted on: a padded, sequined bra and pleather mini-skirt with a fringed bolero jacket. After Isabelle used Ben’s prized palette to add some color to Courtney’s face, all that was left was loading themselves up with every piece of jewelry Ben owned, before collapsing, giggling, onto his bed. 

Isabelle gazed around the room at all the pictures on Ben’s walls. She smiled appreciatively at his Moulin Rouge poster, and then her eyes lit up at the shrine to Robbie Williams over his desk. 

“Your brother has good taste. I’d give anything to pash Ewan. Or Robbie.”

Courtney nodded in agreement, though she wasn’t sure she saw the allure, exactly. Although she had to admit that Ewan was at least relatively cute, compared to most boys she knew. 

“You ever pashed anyone, Courtney?” Isabelle had a slightly teasing lilt to her voice. As if she already knew the answer.

Courtney bristled a little. She was determined not be seen as a baby. “Yes,” she lied.

Isabelle raised an eyebrow. “Really? Who?”

Thinking quickly, Courtney answered, “Greg.” The tall, soft-spoken boy on her cheer team was always nice to Courtney, and he was clean and didn’t smell nearly as bad as most of the other boys in her class. If she was gonna have to pash any boy, it may as well have been him.

Isabelle burst out laughing. “You sure love the homos, Court. Greg is gay as mardi gras.”

Courtney felt her cheeks heat up. She cleared her throat, racking her brain to try and divert the attention away from herself. “Have…have you pashed anyone?”

“Nope!” Isabelle said. “I want my first time to be magical. Like in the movies. My friends think I’m weird but I don’t care.”

“I…I don’t think that’s weird.” Courtney suddenly wished she hadn’t lied. “I think it’s cool.”

“Yeah, well. I’m not just leaving it up to fate, though. I practice a lot.”

“How do you practice?”

“Like…you know…on your hand, or a pillow, or…you know, with your friends.”

“Your friends?”

Isabelle flashed a crooked smile, revealing those dimples that Courtney wanted to reach out and touch. It took all her strength to keep her hands to herself. “You know…like…girls don’t count. That’s just like, so you can get good at it for when it’s time to kiss a boy. Like, for real.”

Courtney’s palms began to get sweaty, and her mouth was dry as chalk. She swallowed. 

“Of course, you don’t need practice, since you’re already an expert. You and Greeeeg.” Isabelle winked and Courtney thought she might die of embarrassment.

“I…may have lied about that,” she whispered.

“No shit,” Isabelle replied, hazel eyes glittering with delight.

Courtney focused away from her eyes, on her shoulders, tanned a deep caramel from the summer sun, such an enticing color that Courtney had a desire to lick her. She heard rustling and felt Isabelle moving closer to her on the bed. She looked up, saw her plush, round, plum-colored lips. She wondered if they would taste like the watermelon candy they’d eaten earlier.

“Do you want me to show you?” Isabelle asked, one finger just barely touching her chin.

Courtney prayed that she didn’t appear overly enthusiastic when she nodded, closing her eyes. And then Isabelle’s soft, moist lips were on hers, and her fingertips itched, tentatively reaching out to graze her bare midriff, circling her waist, just as Isabelle lifted her head.

“Okay, now, remember, I’m the boy,” Isabelle reminded her, rolling Courtney onto her back. “So you need to follow my lead. This time, you gotta open your mouth.”

Courtney nodded, glassy-eyed. At that point she would’ve followed her off a cliff. Her lips parted eagerly and Isabelle slipped her tongue inside, shifting the weight of her body so that she was pressing Courtney down into the mattress. 

Hands cupping Courtney’s face, Isabelle murmured soft instructions to her. “Rub your tongue against mine…suck on my bottom lip…squeeze my butt…” Courtney tried to hear and follow as she floated through the clouds, ecstatic and breathless by the sheer proximity of their bodies, bare skin of their bellies pressed together, the scent of her strawberry shampoo.

Skin flushed and burning, Courtney arched her body up, rolling her hips, lifting her knees, rubbing against the older girl, in a state of utter lust, until she was slammed back into reality by the sound of laughter, Isabelle rolling away. “Damn, Courtney. You’re a little nympho, aren’t you?”

Courtney raised herself onto her elbows, panting, hair falling into her eyes. She tried to catch her breath, watching Isabelle straighten her top and fix her lipstick, at a loss for words.

“It’s cool if I borrow these clothes, right? I’m meeting Megan and Zoe at the mall.”

“Y-yeah. It’s cool.”

“Great. See you later!” 

***

By dinnertime, Courtney was still too embarrassed to join the family. She told Mrs. Peterson that she had a stomachache. Did Isabelle think she was…what did Isabelle think? 

It turned out that her fears were for naught. Isabelle didn’t seem to think anything at all about her. She spent the next few days out with her friends, mostly, and when Courtney’s mom came to pick her up that Saturday, she merely gave her a casual wave and a “see you around,” barely looking up from the fashion magazine in her lap.

They didn’t see each other much over the next school year, either, since Isabelle was in the High School and Courtney was still in Primary. It was probably for the best when her family moved again the following summer. After seeing her boyfriend dropping her off a few times, Courtney knew that there would be no more “practicing” required, and she couldn’t bear those knowing smirks Isabelle would toss her way on the rare occasion she actually acknowledged her existence. Like she KNEW something.

She didn’t know anything.

With Isabelle gone, it was much easier for Courtney to paint on a smile and be the perfect daughter, the perfect student, the little angel that everyone wanted her to be. And over the next few years, the sharp pain Courtney felt every time she thought about the older girl faded into a dull ache, a small, insignificant scar on her psyche that she barely remembered, a part of who she was without ever thinking about it.

Although occasionally, the kissing lessons did come in handy.


End file.
